Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1887-05-19
CALIFORNIA EDITORS.
PRENTICE MILFORD TELLS OF
THEIR PERlLs AND PLEASURES.
California and Her Rural Press During
the Civil WA - Guarding an oAice
Against an Attack that NovcF Came.
An Amusing Typographical
ispeeial Correspondence.l

An Amusing Typographical
Especial Correspondence
BosToN, March 2o.-On looking back / find
to my surprise that l have had q considerable
and varied experience in editing country
papers, especially in California. More often
my commission as editor has been a tempo
rary one, having been called to the chair
while the responsible editor slid down to San
Francisco on a !'pasear." A "pasear" is from
the Spanish, and means in American that the
editor has 500 or $500 ahead of the hounds
wherewith lie proposes to visit San Francisco
and refresh and recruit his tired brain with
whatever San Francisco can give him. l
think these alterations in editorial pulpits O
good practice. They give the man left tenn
porarily in charge an opportunity to ventilate
his peculiar ideas, and III cases give the editor
considerable to do on coming back to repair
the damage and quiet the sensation the tenn
porary man has made among the readers.
Country editing grows more savage as it
moves westward. l remember twenty odd
years ago being shown a closet in the sanctum
of a California weekly paper full of rifles,
shot guns and revolvers. That was in Mari
posa county. The pen there and then did not
seem mightier than the sword. The EDITORS
pen III "up country" California was often
tipped with personality, invective, abuse
and gail. Especially was this the c, o during
the war. When in the town of Sonora, Tue
lumne county, the Republican and Democratic
organs appeared everybody looked for a row.
Party %prejudices and party sympathies
were brought mnch closer together than Iii
our northern towns and villages. In Califor-
MIA the population was about equally divided
between those of northern and southern
birth. The state at one time was "on the
fence" and came near tipping over into tho
southern fold. There was "blood on the face
of the noon all the time in those days. The
man who most lowered as an editor was he
who could handle the pistol as quickly as the
pen. 1t did not matter much if he could
handle the pen at all SO that he
could the pistol, and hired some
one to drive a singing quill for him. Per-
sonal abuse was what the boys on both sides
wanted to read. The interest in an argument
was intensified by the possibility that the
principals after ~exhausting words would have
recourse to powder and lead.
And so they did. A leading Republican
editor went after his man while he YVES eating
his dinner in a Sonora restaurant. He never
finished that dinner. The fighting editor then
went to his office, got his shot gun, went into
the main street m dared the whole Demo
cratic party to take him. The Democratic
party did not take him. The sheriff did.
But that was all. TIL editor lived on. The
man he shot died. In a fortnight the affair
had lost its freshness as news, and the town,
like. the barber, was In thought singing out
"Nextp
On the night after the news of Lincoln's
assassination reached California the office
of the Democratic paper in Sonora was
filed with men armed with shotguns
and rifles, for the report ran to the effect
that the Republicans intended to sack the
Democrats office. I was one of the armed
men on this occasion. Never was there 8
more miserable defender of a Lost cause.n
My mind was made up on one point and that
was to discharge myself from that office on
the first discharge of guns. That was a long
and weary night waiting for the attack which
never came. In imagination it was coming
every minute. I think the brayest
among us was glad it did not Conc.
j passed part of the time in trying to
cipher out whether courage was a merely
physicallor q mental quality. decided in
favor OF the mental. Because there was q
demJohn in the office furnished with ammu-
milton for the occasion. 1t contained con-
CAGsrp fSEVtuUIS llulu lOVus OH GLlr1CU IrOfn
corr. Most Of $ favored at that time this
kind of vegetable diet. As / drew nutriment
from the demijohn ii recuperated my body
and made it stronger. AS it became stronger
/ felt temporarily more inclined to meet the
possible foe-for Il few minutes. But as the
effect of this nourishment wore off / felt
less and less inclined to meet the foe,
unless on friendly terms. The condensed
corn extract seemed to affect first the mental,
and as il changed the mental from cowardice
to courage. its effect seemed to spread to the
physical and brace that up also.
A few years after this | found myself
running a Democratic campaign paper in
the center of a large agricultural section.
The farmers or aranchers' coming in on mar
ket days We're wont to pay their respects to
the editor of their party organ. They had a
good deal to say without saying much after
all They had ideas tney wished
generously enough to give me, bu,
the trouble was SO many words had
accumulated about the idea, that 1t be.
came difficult to discover the idea from the
words. l notice the same tendency at times
In some peoples writings and feel also al
other times such an affection myself. Nv
patrons had rather vague ideas as to the
nature of the; EDITORS duties. They assumed
fer me an ability to write in a single day the
selected story on the ontside of the paper and
all the editorial and selected matter besides
| might have taken this as complimentary,
but | found they thought even this not much
out of the bounds of any EDITORS daily work
Indeed, it seemed never to occur to them that
1t took much longer to write d story or an
editorial than it did for them to read it. ]
found that writing with them was a trife